A MINOAN DEMETER?

 

Demeter and Metanira. Detail of the belly of an Apulian red-figure hydra, ca. 340 BC. By Varrese Painter - User:Bibi Saint-Pol, own work, 2008, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3839471

In the interest of hopping a little more briskly along this rabbit hole, I have decided to use the simple quote from John Chadwick – a noted Aegean scholar – that I found in Wikipedia and move on. Here it is:

 

The earliest recorded worship of a deity possibly equivalent to Demeter is found in Linear B Mycenean Greek tablets of c. 1400-1200 BC found at Pylos. The tablets describe worship of the “two queens and the king”, which may be related to Demeter, Persephone and Poseidon.

 

Apparently, the indicator is the name i-da-ma-te, or Demeter. And there is the date: 1400-1200 BC. That’s early, people. Real early. It indicates that Demeter was an established deity by no later than the Mycenaean period…and possibly earlier.

On even earlier Linear A tablets, the same or a similar goddess was mentioned as da-ma-te. If indicative of Demeter, this would place the earth Goddess in the Minoan period, a few hundred years earlier. Pretty heady stuff.

If Demeter was a recognized goddess in this period, the Minoans would have dedicated temples and shrines to her. So, exactly where were Demeter’s cult centers? And were they earlier than her dedicatory tablets?

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Chadwick, John. The Mycenaean World. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1976. 

“Demeter.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 7 Sept. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demeter.

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